J 999 Jersey Personalised Number Plate

A REGISTRATION plate which was expected to fetch up to £40,000 at auction on Wednesday failed to sell.

J999, which is assigned to a scooter of ‘insignificant value’, went under the hammer at Glencoe Auction Rooms in St Lawrence.

But it failed to reach its reserve price.

Although nowadays it is strapped to the back of a two-wheeler which has seen better days, it may once have been attached to the star asset of Pontypandy Fire Station.

A JEP investigation (a quick search on Google) has uncovered evidence that the J-plate once belonged to Jupiter – the shiny red fire engine driven by Fireman Sam.

It's not clear whether the Welsh firefighting hero is now trying to raise some much needed capital after falling on hard times, or whether they are simply two registration plates which happen to share the same number.

More Number plate Auction news:

A TEAMNZ number plate being auctioned on Trade Me has reached a bid of $23,000, 11 hours before closing.

User floppy9 has listed the plate from Taranaki with a starting bid of $20,000.

It urged buyers to "be the first to show them off around the streets of New Zealand".

Peter Burling was at the helm for Emirates Team New Zealand when the Kiwis overwhelmed Cup holders Oracle Team USA 7-1 off Bermuda to lift the Auld Mug on June 27.

Floppy9 advised to hold on to it until the next America's Cup as a good investment.

The plates, according to the seller, had been bought a very long time ago.

How close a series of letters or numbers are to a real name of word: if the match quality is high (and the numbers and letters are very convincing in making a popular word), the value of the registration plate will be higher. This means that a match like 5IMON, for the name Simon, will be worth a lot more than a more obscure set of letters and numbers that are not as convincing a match, such as S17 MMM for the name Sam.

The style of the plate: this means establishing if it is a new-style plate, an older-style format or if it is dateless or Irish, for instance. Other options are that it is a prefix-style plate or a suffix-style plate. New-style number plates, which have been produced since 2001, tend to be the least valuable because they are a bit less appealing to some collectors, plus the rule about not having plates that are newer than your car can also come into play, putting people off from buying a newer-style plate for their older car. Prefix-style number plates, which were in production between 1983 and 2001 can be more popular as more vehicles are entitled to have those licence numbers, and they may have fewer characters in total. Suffix-style plates, issued from 1963 to 1983 are relatively rare, which means they can attract higher prices than prefix-style plates and newer designs. Dateless number plates, also known as cherished number plates, were produced between 1903 and 1963 and are nearly always the most valuable number plate configurations; they have fewer digits and their dateless nature means that people can hide the age of their car. Irish number plates are similar to dateless number plates, especially because they don’t have a year identifier. They also tend to be cheaper than other types of vehicle registration plates.

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